Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/264

 256 "The Bean-stalk legend is still clearer: A Tongan lady granted her love to Tui Langi (King of the Sky), and had a son by him. When the child grew up into boyhood, the other boys reproached him for being 'without a father.' He went weeping to his mother, who comforted him by the story of his birth. When he heard this he set out in search of his father. At night he stuck his walking-stick of noko-noko (casuarina) into the sand, and lay down to sleep beside it. When he awoke in the early dawn he found it grown into a tree, the upper branches of which penetrated into the sky. He climbed the tree up to Langi, where he found his father, to whom he introduced himself as his son. Afterwards he came down again at Kandavu, in Fiji, by what means the legend does not say; but it is noteworthy that he appeared there in company with two men, 'whose faces were white.' It is possible that this may be a reminiscence of the arrival at Kandavu of two escaped convicts from Norfolk Island, who might have picked up some vagabond Tongan on the way. Supposing them to have been wrecked on the Kandavu reef, the Tongan might have concocted the tale of the Sky King to save himself from the usual fate of those whom the gods gave to the Fijians from the sea.

"This Fijian Jack was called at first Rávu rávu mai lángi ("The Slayer from the Sky"), a name which he earned by attacking the local gods and killing them by one blow of his fist. He went from island to island, thus establishing his superiority, until he settled at Lakemba, in East Fiji, having previously married Audi Máta kámi kamitha, the daughter of Ndengei, the great serpent-god of the Kauvandra, Navitilevu. His son was called Táliaitupóu, whom he made chief in his stead after some years, and then returned to Langi and took the chieftainship there.

"These myths are not purely Fijian. Lukemba, where I got them, is strongly tinged with Tongan colours, and that part of the group is a sort of hybrid Polynesian, instead of Melanesian, as is Fiji proper. It would therefore be erroneous to give the legends as Fijian. I may add that, even if my suggestion as to the coming of Rávu to Kandavu be correct, the fact that he 'concocted' the legend would not mean that be invented it: that is not at all likely. But if he knew